It is estimated that more than two million breadmaking machines have now been purchased and that the number is growing fast. The reason for this popularity is largely that there is a widespread appetite for truly fresh bread, fresher than can be bought in stores. The yen for bread freshly out of the oven poses the problem that fresh, warm bread is not easily sliced into neat slices of any desired thickness and of equal thickness in all parts of the slice. This yen is what led to the development of the slicer herein described. This device enables one to serve precisely these two purposes, i.e. to slice bread as soon as it has cooled enough to handle and to slice bread and many other food products evenly of precisley the desired thickness.
Food products of various types are often provided in large chunks or loaves which are typically sliced into relatively thin slices. For example, "deli" type meat products are usually provided in elongated loaf type form, and slices are cut from the end of the loaf as required. The same is true of many cheeses. While bread loaves can be bought in either cut or uncut form, most bread purchased in grocery stores might be pre-sliced, or the purchaser could have the store or bakery slice the bread if so desired. However, if the bread is not sliced at the store or bakery, or if the bread is home baked, then the user must cut slices in order to use the bread.
While specialized slicers are used in commercial establishments for slicing meat or bread products, these slicers are relatively large, motorized products which are not generally suitable for home use. Many meat slicers include a rotatable, motorized cutting blade with the loaf of meat being held against the cutting blade and moved back and forth across the blade to cut sequentially slices of meat off the end of the loaf. Bread slicers often include a plurality of vertical, reciprocating saw blades spaced apart by the thickness of the desired slices, with the bread loaf being pushed through the saw blades to slice the entire loaf in one action. Again, these slicers are generally too expensive for home use.
In addition, cutting an entire loaf of bread all at once is disadvantageous if the bread is not consumed quickly, particularly for home baked bread lacking preservatives, since the bread tends to dry out rapidly. It would be better to cut off just individual slices as needed and leave the rest of the bread loaf intact.
Obviously, a loaf of bread could be cut simply by holding the loaf of bread in place with one hand and using the other hand to manipulate a knife to cut slices off the end of the loaf. However, this is not ideal for a number of reasons. Gripping the loaf tightly with the hand tends to crush the bread while it is being cut. In addition, it is difficult to cut slices having a consistent thickness, or to adjust easily the thickness of the sliced bread, simply using an unsupported knife. Finally, if the user is not careful, there is a possibility that the user might accidentally cut his or her fingers with the knife blade.
Various devices are known for use with a manual knife to help hold a loaf of bread when slicing the bread. Many of these devices comprise channel shaped boxes in which the loaf of bread is placed, with the side walls of the boxes having a plurality of knife slots spaced along the length thereof so that multiple slices can be cut one after another along the length of the loaf. Often, these slots are spaced at different distances from one another to allow the bread slices to have various thicknesses. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,072,450 to Hamblin, 1,131,333 to Coon and 4,964,323 to Fortney disclose devices of this type.
While these devices are more effective than simply using an unsupported knife to slice the bread, they have various disadvantages. For one thing, the knife slots in each side wall have to be precisely aligned with all the other slots in the other side wall to allow the knife blade to pass across the width of the box to slice the bread. The need for such an alignment, and the use in the first place of multiple slots spaced apart in an array of such slots, makes the construction of such a device relatively labor intensive, and accordingly more complex and expensive. In addition, to adjust the thickness of the bread slices, the end of the bread loaf has to be positioned appropriately adjacent to those knife slots having the right spacing from adjacent slots. This can be difficult and time consuming to do, thus making the device complex to use if slices having different thicknesses are required.
The Applicant has two prior patents, namely U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,383,384 and 5,566,602, which show a slicing device having a single set of knife slots at one end of a bread loaf supporting channel. The thickness of the slices are adjusted by slipping one or more thickness adjusting plates into the channel between the knife slots and an end wall. This device is less expensive to construct and much simpler to use than many of the prior art devices described above. However, the thickness adjusting plates have to be on hand in order to be used. If the thickness adjusting plates are lost or misplaced, the thickness of the slices cannot be adjusted.
U.S. Pat. No. 252,325 to Moore shows a bread cutter with an adjustable gage that can move towards or away from the knife slot to adjust the slice thickness. The cutter of Moore is not in the form of a U-shaped channel but has only one side wall, a bottom wall, and the aforementioned gage. In addition, the gage has a very small width such that the end of the bread loaf would mostly stick out to the side past the gage and not be in contact with the gage. Thus, it would be easy to cock or tilt the loaf relative to the gage resulting in slices with inconsistent thickness. Moreover, the knife is quite exposed to the user's fingers in the Moore device.